Many Western Christians are baffled by the complexity of the Christian East, which can appear to be a bewildering array of national churches and ethnic jurisdictions. There are four distinct and separate eastern Christian communions or confessional families of churches: 1) the Assyrian Church of the East, which is not in communion with any other church; 2) the six Oriental Orthodox Churches (Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian, Malankara, and Eritrean) which, even though each is independent, are in full communion with one another; 3) the Orthodox Church, which is a communion of national or regional churches, all of which recognize the Patriarch of Constantinople as a focus of unity, and accord to him certain rights and privileges; 4) the Eastern Catholic Churches, all of which are in communion with the Church of Rome and its bishop.

The focus in this article is upon the Orthodox Church, sometimes called the Eastern Orthodox Church to distinguish it from the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Orthodox Christians consider themselves to be part of one church in the sense that they share the same faith and sacraments, the same Byzantine liturgical, canonical, and spiritual tradition. All Orthodox recognize the first seven ecumenical councils as normative for doctrine and church life.

At the level of church government, the Patriarch of Constantinople is recognized as �first among equals�. He does not have authority to intervene in the affairs of the local churches outside his own patriarchate, but he can convoke the member churches to meetings and exercise some influence in coordinating their activity, at times mediating in problematic situations in an effort to find solutions.

There are fourteen Orthodox Churches that are generally accepted as �autocephalous,� which in Greek means �self-headed�. An autocephalous church possesses the right to resolve all internal problems on its own authority and the ability to choose its own bishops, including the Patriarch, Archbishop or Metropolitan who heads the church. While each autocephalous church acts independently, they all remain in full sacramental and canonical communion with one another.

Today these autocephalous Orthodox Churches include the four ancient Eastern Patriarchates (Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem), and ten other Orthodox churches that have emerged over the centuries in Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania, and the Czech and Slovak Republics.

The Patriarchate of Moscow, on its own initiative, granted autocephalous status to most of its parishes in North America under the name of the Orthodox Church of America (OCA). However, since the Patriarchate of Constantinople claims the exclusive right to grant autocephalous status, it and most other Orthodox Churches do not recognize the autocephaly of the OCA. This is why it does not take part in such pan-Orthodox activities as international dialogues with other Christian Churches. In practical terms, it functions as an autocephalous church, and its inclusion in the American Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops indicates that it has achieved a certain legitimacy among Orthodox Churches in the United States and Canada.

One of the most striking facts about the schism between the Eastern and Western Christian Churches is that it cannot be dated or identified with any particular event. Historians tend to pin it on certain low points in the relationship reflected in specific events, such as the mutual anathemas pronounced by the papal legates and Patriarch of Constantinople against each other in 1054, or the pillaging of the city of Constantinople by the fourth Latin crusade in 1204.

Today it is widely agreed that a whole host of factors contributed to the growing separation which spanned from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries: the interruption of regular communication that resulted from political developments; the loss of the ability to understand the language of the other, be it Greek or Latin; and doctrinal issues. The ineffective reunion councils of 1274 in Lyons and 1439 in Florence, followed by a Roman policy of proselytism and uniatism created a permanent alienation and deep levels of resentment yet to be healed.

Today, Western Christians tend to see the schism in terms of differences in church order, but for Eastern Christians there are doctrinal questions at stake. The Eastern Orthodox consider the West to have broken away from the common Tradition in adding certain words to the Nicene Creed, papal centralization, infallibility, the Marian dogmas in Catholicism, and the ordination of women in Protestantism. These represent unilateral developments moving away from the Apostolic heritage.

We are witnessing concerted efforts in our time to reverse this pattern of separation and alienation. When in 1964 Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras embraced in Jerusalem, the cradle of Christianity, and a year later effected a mutual lifting of the anathemas, they dramatically jump-started a process of reconciliation between Eastern and Western Christians after centuries of estrangement. In 1965 they invited members of their churches to begin getting reacquainted with one another in a �dialogue of charity�.

Fifteen years later, in 1980, the dialogue of charity was upgraded to a �dialogue of truth� with the establishment of a formal theological dialogue in which each of the autocephalous churches is represented by a bishop and a theologian on the Orthodox side, with a corresponding number of representatives on the Catholic side. The dialogue commission decided to begin with areas that can be affirmed together, and gradually approach the church-dividing issues on the basis of these shared convictions.

This method has been thus far fruitful, producing the following statements: �The Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity� (1982); �Faith, Sacraments, and the Unity of the Church� (1987); �The Sacrament of Order in the Sacramental Structure of the Church� (1988). The question of authority in the Church was scheduled for study at the 1990 meeting, but was forestalled by factors associated with the political condition of life in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and issues around the Eastern Churches in union with Rome (uniatism). The Orthodox insisted that the dialogue find a solution to this problem before continuing with a theological agenda.

The Joint Commission produced a statement in 1993 entitled �Uniatism, Method of Union of the Past, and the Present Search for Full Communion,� but many Orthodox still found it unsatisfactory. A meeting in Baltimore and Emmitsburg, MD in 2000 failed to resolve the impasse. The Holy See has subsequently pursued relations with individual Orthodox churches, an orientation that actually corresponds more naturally to the decentralized character of their relations among themselves. In a new and positive development, representatives of all the Orthodox Churches signaled their readiness to reopen the theological dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, and convened under the chairmanship of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos in early September to determine the dialogue�s main points. Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, said that there would be a preparatory meeting in December and a plenary in the spring of 2006.

Pope John Paul II took every opportunity to foster positive relations, designating a church in Rome for the liturgical use of the Bulgarian Orthodox in 2003, and another for the use of the local Greek Orthodox community in 2004. In 2005 he returned an icon of great devotion in Russia, the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the relics of St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory Nazianzen to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Pope Benedict XVI, who shares John Paul II�s conviction that we must learn to breathe again with both lungs�the Western and the Eastern�went first to Bari, long the object of pilgrimages by Orthodox because the relics of St Nicholas of Myra have been there for many centuries, to preach at the 24th International Eucharistic Congress there. It is likely that he will travel to Istanbul for the feast of St. Andrew, blood brother of Peter and patron of the Church of Constantinople.

For its part, the North American Orthodox-Catholic Consultation keeps moving forward, issuing a major study in 2003 entitled �The Filioque: a Church-dividing Issue?� North America, with its sizable immigrant populations of Eastern Christians and pluralist societal context of good relations with neighboring Christian congregations, represents the best terrain for significant advance at every level in the wider dialogue that relates to a sharing of faith and practice among the members of Eastern and Western Christian churches. Now, more than ever, the local churches are the frontlines where historic divisions must be overcome through coming to know one another against as brothers and sisters in Christ.